stonerl/thaw

★ 5,613SwiftAudience · generalComplexity · 1/5Setup · easy

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      Hide menu bar icons
      Show icons on demand
      Declutter top bar
    Install options
      Download zip file
      Homebrew command
      Beta channel
    Languages
      13 plus languages
      Crowdin translation
    Audience
      Mac users
      Power users

mindmap root((repo)) What it does Hide menu bar icons Show icons on demand Declutter top bar Install options Download zip file Homebrew command Beta channel Languages 13 plus languages Crowdin translation Audience Mac users Power users

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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Hide unused menu bar icons to reduce clutter on your Mac's screen.

USE CASE 2

Show or hide specific app icons on demand when you need to access them.

USE CASE 3

Keep your menu bar organized across many apps without running out of space at the top of the screen.

Tech stack

SwiftmacOS

Getting it running

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min

In plain English

Thaw is a free macOS app that manages the icons in your Mac's menu bar, the strip of icons that lives in the top-right corner of the screen. Its main job is letting you hide and show those icons on demand, which is useful when the menu bar gets crowded with app icons and there is not enough space to display them all. The app requires macOS 26 or later. Thaw is a fork of an earlier app called Ice, created by Jordan Baird. When Ice went inactive, the Thaw project picked up the code to keep it maintained, fix bugs, and make sure it continues to work on newer versions of macOS. The goal is also to finish features that were planned for Ice but never shipped. You can install Thaw by downloading a zip file from the releases page and dragging it to your Applications folder, or by using Homebrew, a popular Mac package manager, with the command "brew install thaw". A separate beta channel is available for users who want to try newer features before they are in the stable release. The app is translated into more than a dozen languages, including German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Russian, Portuguese (Brazil), and several others. Translations are managed through Crowdin, a collaborative translation platform, so community members can contribute. The project has a Discord server for support and discussion, and contributions are accepted for both translations and code. The README is focused on installation and translation coverage, and does not detail every specific feature the app includes beyond the core menu bar management function.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1

Show me how to install Thaw on macOS using Homebrew and configure it to hide my menu bar icons by default.

Prompt 2

Help me write a macOS automation script that toggles Thaw's menu bar visibility when I press a keyboard shortcut.

Prompt 3

I want to contribute a translation to the Thaw app, show me how to add a new language on Crowdin and submit a pull request.

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